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The Average Survival Time After a Person Has Been Diagnosed With Mesothelioma is One Year
One of the more tragic aspects of mesothelioma cancer is that, upon diagnosis, there is usually not a long lifespan for most patients. Due to the fact that it is incurable and diagnosed in its later stages in most cases, many patients are lucky if they can survive with the disease for longer than one year.
Because of the long latency period of up to 50 years that mesothelioma can have, most patients do not show signs of the disease and begin receiving medical care for it until they are in their 50s or 60s. As a result, patients are not usually in optimal shape, and may not be in the best condition to fight the disease and receive aggressive treatment methods.
Additionally, because mesothelioma is itself an aggressive disease and is incurable in most cases, it usually spreads much quicker and has a debilitating effect on its patients than other forms of lung cancer do.
The survival rate of a patient is usually dictated largely by stage that the disease is in, the size of any tumors and the type of malignant mesothelioma cells that are present, and the amount of fluid that has accumulated in the patient’s chest. If surgical treatments are a possibility to remove tumors and drain fluid, a patient’s survival rate may increase drastically when compared to those in which surgery is not possible.
Additionally, recent studies have revealed that the combination of certain methods may be effective in increasing a patient’s lifespan following a diagnosis. A study published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology in 2009 by a team of scientists at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City found that patients who underwent trimodality therapy were able to survive with mesothelioma for a prolonged time period.
Patients who went through chemotherapy, surgery, and radiation therapy for the study showed a median survival time of 29.1 months, while 61.2 percent of patients lived for more than two years. Patients who only had one or two of the treatment types had a median survival time of only 17 months.
No matter what the chances of survival are, consulting an asbestos attorney following a mesothelioma diagnosis may be well worth the while of a patient and their family if they can link the diagnosis to asbestos exposure that was caused by a former employer. If the appropriate links between the illness and the employer can be determined, a patient and their family may be able to receive a significant mesothelioma settlement that could ease any financial burdens accrued during the treatment process.
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